Harley Quinn’s season 5 finale sure feels like a series finale, but the end or renewal of the DC Comics-inspired animated series is still up in the air.
Harley Quinn closed out its fifth season this week, a frankly incredible achievement for a show (of which there were not few) that premiered on the hyper-niche DC Universe streaming service for DC Comics fans. (Hi, it’s me; I was the target audience.)
As pretty much the only show in the DC Universe stable to reach a broad audience, Harley Quinn deserves to take a big bow — and it was hard not to think along those lines while watching this Thursday’s episode, “The Mess Is the Point.” The wrap-up episode felt suspiciously like a series finale, not a season finale.
[Ed. note: This post contains some spoilers for Harley Quinn season 5.]
The back half of Harley Quinn’s fifth season has felt like it was setting up a new status quo and looking back nostalgically in multiple ways. Mainstay Frank the Plant got a murder/funeral mini arc, leading Harley and Ivy to a new stage of adult life: parenting Frank’s offspring/their daughter Frankette. Harley reconciled with her mother, who otherwise had not appeared on the show since season 1, and by the last scene in the finale the so long and thanks for all the fish energy leapt up a level.
It wasn’t just the reflective piano music and the pan over the series’ characters having a nice dinner party and dropping lines that illustrate how far they’ve come, or name dropping Sy Borgman, a mainstay of seasons 1 and 2 who hasn’t appeared since season 3.
